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Page 18
And each time he answered vociferously, encouragingly, "Si, si--
San Salvatore."
"We don't know of course if he's taking us there," said Mrs.
Arbuthnot at last in a low voice, after they had been driving as it
seemed to them a long while, and had got off the paving-stones of the
sleep-shrouded town and were out on a winding road with what they could
just see was a low wall on their left beyond which was a great black
emptiness and the sound of the sea. On their right was something close
and steep and high and black--rocks, they whispered to each other; huge
rocks.
They felt very uncomfortable. It was so late. It was so dark.
The road was so lonely. Suppose a wheel came off. Suppose they met
Fascisti, or the opposite of Fascisti. How sorry they were now that
they had not slept at Genoa and come on the next morning in daylight.
"But that would have been the first of April," said Mrs. Wilkins,
in a low voice.
"It is that now," said Mrs. Arbuthnot beneath her breath.
"So it is," murmured Mrs. Wilkins.
They were silent.
Beppo turned round on his box--a disquieting habit already
noticed, for surely his horse ought to be carefully watched--and again
addressed them with what he was convinced was lucidity--no patois, and
the clearest explanatory movements.
How much they wished their mothers had made them learn Italian
when they were little. If only now they could have said, "Please sit
round the right way and look after the horse." They did not even know
what horse was in Italian. It was contemptible to be so ignorant.
In their anxiety, for the road twisted round great jutting rocks,
and on their left was only the low wall to keep them out of the sea
should anything happen, they too began to gesticulate, waving their
hands at Beppo point ahead. They wanted him to turn round again and
face his horse, that was all. He thought they wanted him to drive
faster; and there followed a terrifying ten minutes during which, as he
supposed, he was gratifying them. He was proud of his horse, and it
could go very fast. He rose in his seat, the whip cracked, the horse
rushed forward, the rocks leaped towards them, the little fly swayed,
the suit-cases heaved, Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins clung. In this
way they continued, swaying, heaving, clattering, clinging, till at a
point near Castagneto there was a rise in the road, and on reaching the
foot of the rise the horse, who knew every inch of the way, stopped
suddenly, throwing everything in the fly into a heap, and then
proceeded up at the slowest of walks.
Beppo twisted himself round to receive their admiration, laughing
with pride in his horse.
There was no answering laugh from the beautiful ladies. Their
eyes, fixed on him, seemed bigger than ever, and their faces against
the black of the night showed milky.
But here at least, once they were up the slope, were houses. The
rocks left off, and there were houses; the low wall left off, and there
were houses; the sea shrunk away, and the sound of it ceased, and the
loneliness of the road was finished. No lights anywhere, of course,
nobody to see them pass; and yet Beppo, when the houses began, after
looking over his shoulder and shouting "Castagneto" at the ladies, once
more stood up and cracked his whip and once more made his horse dash
forward.
"We shall be there in a minute," Mrs. Arbuthnot said to herself,
holding on.
"We shall soon stop now," Mrs. Wilkins said to herself, holding
on. They said nothing aloud, because nothing would have been heard
above the whip-cracking and the wheel-clattering and the boisterous
inciting noises Beppo was making at his horse.
Anxiously they strained their eyes for any sight of the beginning
of San Salvatore.
They had supposed and hoped that after a reasonable amount of
village a mediaeval archway would loom upon them, and through it they
would drive into a garden and draw up at an open, welcoming door, with
light streaming from it and those servants standing in it who,
according to the advertisement, remained.
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